Chapter 6 Jesus Fasted

Summary

In this conversation, Troy Kennedy discusses the journey of hero worship and the intentionality of becoming more like Jesus. He emphasizes the significance of Jesus as the historic person who transformed the lives of his followers. The practice of slowing down and paying attention is explored, leading to a discussion on fasting. Kennedy addresses the challenges and misconceptions surrounding fasting and highlights its role in reminding us of our dependence on God. Fasting also disrupts our regular rhythms, allowing space for a deeper connection with our source of life. The conversation concludes with an invitation to share experiences and continue the journey of imitating Jesus.

You can find the book "Hero Worship" on Amazon or christianbook.com to purchase.
Amazon Link
Christianbook.com

Takeaways

Jesus is the centerpiece of humanity and the ultimate role model for imitation.
Slowing down and paying attention to the beauty around us helps us connect with God and others.
Fasting is a focusing practice that reminds us of our dependence on God and disrupts toxic rhythms in our lives.
Replacing unhealthy dependencies with a reliance on God brings peace and a sense of purpose.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Purpose of the Journey
01:09 The Historic Person of Jesus
02:08 Jesus as the New Adam
03:14 Slowing Down and Paying Attention
04:03 Understanding Fasting
05:56 Challenges and Misconceptions about Fasting
08:02 Dependence and Disruption through Fasting
11:23 Replacing Toxic Rhythms with Something Better
12:15 Closing Remarks and Invitation to Share

Creators & Guests

Host

Troy Kennedy

Husband, Dad, Pastor. A disciple of Jesus. Author of new book "Hero Worship: A 12 Week Journey to Become More Like Jesus." https://t.co/Zgr4SrEOab

What is Troy Marshall Kennedy Podcast?

Jesus always has more life for you than you have known. How do we follow him and discover what it is to flourish and thrive in today's complex, challenging world? How do we have the intimate relationship with God our hearts long for? Troy Marshall Kennedy responds to these all-important questions as a veteran pastor, teacher, and author. Join us as we explore rhythms of life and practice to help us love Jesus, become like Jesus, and share Jesus in our everyday lives. Season one episodes will accompany Troy's new book, "Hero Worship: A 12 Week Journey to Become More Like Jesus."

You can find the book "Hero Worship" on Amazon or christianbook.com to purchase.

Troy Kennedy (00:00.47)
Well, hey everybody, welcome back. We are already in week six of our journey together with hero worship. It's a 12 week journey to become more like Jesus and Troy Kennedy, I'm a pastor, I'm a musician, I'm a songwriter, I'm apparently an author, and I am here to kind of help guide you through this journey of transformation as we intentionally set aside time in our lives.

to come before the Savior, to make an appointment with the boss, an appointment that you don't want to miss. It's that intentionality of coming to Jesus to say, I want to become like you.

There's no one more worthy of my admiration, no one more worthy of imitation than Jesus the Savior, the Son of God, who's this centerpiece in humanity, this great rock that was dropped in the pond of time. And when Jesus landed 2000 years ago in the middle of our mess, He left ripples forwards and backwards throughout all of human history.

the date of his birth and we come right now looking back at Jesus of Nazareth, the historic Rabbi who's born in the, you know, the backwoods of this place in the Roman Empire that nobody wanted to go. And here we are 2,000 years later talking about him. He picked followers, they were never the right people, they weren't people of influence, they weren't people of status, they weren't people of great wealth, they were simple people like you and I.

who were transformed by an encounter with the God man, Jesus, fully God and fully man, Emmanuel, God with us. And so we come and we say, there's no one more optimally human than Jesus. We learn what it is to be fully what we were made to be when we look at Jesus, who is the new Adam. He is the one who shows us

Troy Kennedy (02:08.566)
what we are supposed to be like. We have the original Adam who was broken by sin, by those choices, and then we come and we see Jesus. He says, I make all things new. And he shows us what the new humanity will be. And he is the firstborn of that new humanity that you and I will ultimately one day be transformed into, the way things were meant to be.

the peace and the human flourishing and the thriving and the shalom that was lost at the fall. So, we look back on the historic person of Jesus through the great revelation of scripture and we see these rhythms in the life of the Savior that we come to imitate, to walk in, to become like Him because we love Him. It's not out of obligation or duty or some sort of legalism. That's not sustainable. It just isn't. We come out of love.

We come out of admiration. We come because we want Him to change us from the inside out, to become the kind of people that intuitively do what love requires. So this week...

We're gonna be talking about fasting a little bit. Last week, Jesus slowed down. We learned what it was to slow down the rhythm of our lives, to pay attention to the people in our path, to pay attention to the beauty all around us, to fix our hearts and our minds and our eyes on things above, not on things below.

And in order to do that, to push out that clutter that comes with just being a human being in the 21st century, we have to slow down, deliberately, physically slow down. I pray that was a really rich time for you, that you discovered some things about yourself. Maybe discovered that you were more in a hurry than you realized. And this week we talk about fasting. Fasting is one of those things, as they talk about in the book, it kind of gets a bad

Troy Kennedy (04:03.152)
People will fast from any number of things. They think it's some sort of legalism. There's a lot of different world religions and different practices. People fast for a lot of different reasons. They fast for health reasons. They fast for...

There's just the self-discipline of it. And we're fasting not because we want to become awesome at fasting. We fast because it is a very focusing thing that we do. Jesus fasted for 40 days and 40 nights at the beginning of His public ministry. The scripture says that the Spirit led him into the wilderness and he was tempted by Satan. And in the fast we learn that actually I think Jesus became stronger, not weaker.

dependent on his Heavenly Father. He became more focused and more understood the abundance of what he has.

in his relationship with his heavenly father. And so when he's, when he's fasting, he said, man, he's not going to live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, that's where the real strength is. That's where the transcendent eternal strength, that's where you get that joy, that pervasive sense of God's goodness that transcends your circumstances. It transcends your hunger. For some people, fasting is kind of a deal breaker. It's like, no, I can't, I'll do all these other things. I'll slow down.

I'll read scripture, I'll pray, I'll do these other things that we see in the life of Jesus that we want to imitate. But fasting, because Jesus doesn't really command us to fast. We see him fasting, he talks about it, he kind of assumes that we will do it. But if it's not a direct command, we're kind of like, I'm not so sure I want to do that. I have a friend of mine who is a tremendous runner, he's a marathoner. One of the most disciplined human beings I've ever met. And

Troy Kennedy (05:56.374)
He'll just decide I'm going to become a vegetarian and then he's a vegetarian for the next two years. You know, then he decides he's not going to do that and he's going to start introducing meat back into his diet. He can just by power of his will, he can really turn corners pretty hard. But he told me, he said, yeah, Troy, I'm not a faster. I don't really want to fast. I don't know. I get cranky. I get hungry. I'll get a headache. And understandably that can happen. It has happened to me. It happens to lots of people.

But it is absolutely something that you can do. It is something that you, unless you have medical restrictions, you're diabetic or something like that, you can fast for a day or even just a meal and you're gonna be just fine. Because it's something remarkably focusing about the fast. It can be from food, which I think is the biblical model. It's the thing that we see over and over. But there's lots of other things that we have that are sort of maybe compulsions or rhythms in our life

become very dependent on. Maybe it's your use of social media. Maybe it's your favorite news channel, your favorite news pundit, whether it's on the right or on the left of the spectrum of political ideologies. But there are those things that we've become accustomed to feeding into us. Sometimes it has to do with just screens in general. We're surrounded by screens constantly, whether it's your phone or your TV or your computer.

that like have become a little too familiar, a little bit too, we're a little too dependent on them.

to feel like we're doing well. You know, you don't want to miss the news because you have the fear of missing out. You know, you've got a bad case of FOMO, and you don't want to be that person who's uninformed, or the same thing with social media, or the same thing could be said of even food. You know, you don't want to miss out. There's something happening. Well, fasting is this thing. It pings our hearts. It reminds us of our dependence, and it disrupts our rhythms.

Troy Kennedy (08:02.12)
reminds us of our dependence and disrupts our rhythms. It pings our hearts. So when one fasts, it is for a reason we pick.

a person that we're praying for. We pick a circumstance that has an emotional urgency in us and we let the fast be the thing that every time we are hungry, every time we have the compulsion to turn on the news or turn on the phone or the screen or whatever it is, it reminds us that we're fasting for a reason and it reminds us and drives us to the throne to intercede for that need. It reminds us of our dependence. You know, food is something we need. It's something we're dependent on.

And every time that hunger or that need or that compulsion comes back up, we're reminded that no, our dependence, just like Jesus said, is on every word that comes from the mouth of God. It's not on our social media account. It's not on our likes. It's not on the news. You know, the news is one of those things that can be, um,

energizing, you know, depending on the way you handle your news, it could be one of those string of micro outrages that you have throughout the course of the day. They're just marginally energizing. It's just that little tiny bit of a shot of adrenaline that says, yeah, how dare those people do that? How dare that political leader make that decision? How? I can't believe this is going on in our world. And we just, we're constantly pinged with the little mini outrages that are strung

the day, I want to suggest to you that maybe that's not a good thing. That maybe you should replace the little outrages with peace. Let the fast be a replacement to the regular rhythm in your life. That you're not dependent on those outrages to be energized. You're not dependent on that food.

Troy Kennedy (10:00.866)
We're dependent on the Prince of Peace, the one who guides us and leads us and directs us and who knows us better than we know ourselves, and the one who has been marching through human history with this great kingdom that has been expanding in the name of Jesus for a very long time, of which you and I are a part. Fasting also, it disrupts our rhythms.

disrupts the regular rhythms of our lives. We get into very, very well-worn ruts, you know. We get up a certain time, maybe, you read certain things, you eat certain things, you interact with certain people, you drive a certain route to work, all these things. We have these regular rhythms, and the disruption of those rhythms reminds us, once again, of where our source of life is from.

It's like, yeah, you know, it's, it's the disruption of my rhythm creates a space for something else to occur. It creates a space for me to have that interaction, that sacred appointment, that reminder of where my life source is truly from. So it pings our hearts. It reminds us of what we're praying for. It reminds us that we are dependent on the word of God for everything. And it disrupts our rhythms.

to be replaced, replace those rhythms, at least for the day or the period of the week or however long you're fasting with something better. Right? The rhythms aren't necessarily a bad thing, but if they become, if we become too dependent on them, they can become a toxic thing. So,

We want to disrupt those occasionally just to remind ourselves that those things don't define us. So I would love to hear from you any questions or thoughts. If you're watching this podcast at the beginning of your fasting week or in the middle of your fasting week, I would love to hear how this whole thing is working for you. You can always email me, Troy at Troy M. Kennedy dot com. Please consider leaving a review for Hero Worship on Amazon for some reason.

Troy Kennedy (12:09.616)
helps get it in front of other people. If you feel like this is a blessing and something that is.

cultivating intimacy with the Savior, then let us know, let me know, let other people know on Amazon or wherever you get your books, and share this with somebody else. This is one of those things where we can do all of these practices some of the time. We probably don't do all of them all the time. There are things after you finish these 12 weeks, you're going to want to revisit. You're going to want to go back and say, which one of these was the toughest one for me? Which one of these was the most challenging for me?

know why that was so hard. Maybe I'll go back and do it again. I've known people who have gone through these 12 weeks of hero worship and then they'll go back and they'll spend a month on a particular practice, revisiting it and letting it do the work in their spirits that it's meant to do. So there's a lot of ways to do this. You can go back and revisit them however you like, but at the end of the day we let these practices, the imitation of Jesus,

drive us to the throne room, drive us to the foot of the savior, and drive us to become more like him. God bless you, have an amazing week, and I'll talk to you next time.